Manufactured Housing Communities of Arizona is the statewide industry association representing mobile home park owners and operators throughout Arizona. Our Board has reviewed the proposed eviction rules. Fortunately our legal counsel since 1987 was a member of the Committee that drafted the rules and we are satisfied that the unique aspects of our industry have largely been taken into account in their preparation. However, we are concerned that the new court procedures not unduly increase expenses our members incur in evicting people. As a norm our members are extremely hesitant to engage in evictions since the results are costly to both landlord and tenant. But when necessary it is important that those costs not be increased by the legal process for no good, meaningful purpose. We have reviewed the comments being posted on this forum by Michael A. Parham and we wish to completely adopt them as our own.

The Association of Landlord-Tenant Attorneys (ALTA) is a group of over 30 Maricopa County attorneys that practice primarily Landlord-Tenant law. After careful review of the proposed rule changes, and the comments submitted, ALTA joins in full support of the comments crafted by Michael A. Parham and Scott Williams/Mark Zinman. If enacted as proposed, these rules will detrimentally impact this area of law, resulting in increased costs and attorney fees for the Landlord. Ultimately, this increase in costs and attorney fees will, in most cases, be passed directly to the tenant through forcible/special detainer judgments, thus, creating further harm to those the rules purport to protect.

Hon. Hugh Heygi and I were Co-Chairs of the Rules Committee that ultimately created and proposed these rules. I can guarantee everyone that each and every rule proposal, and its impact on both the landlord industry and on tenants, was thoroughly discussed and taken into consideration during the thousands of man-hours it took to reach a consensus. While the submitted rules are not perfect, they are a reasonable compromise between the various interests represented in landlord/tenant cases. Except for one recommendation for change, I would urge their adoption as amended by the Supreme Court, not because they are perfect as is. Rather, the proposed rules, having been argued and re-argued and re-hashed for so long in our Committee, would likely not be improved much by further discussions. Delaying the adoption of these rules in order to attempt further refinement would not be as productive or beneficial as adopting the amended rules now as is, and proposing further amendments later after everyone has a chance to see how they work in practice.

The Court's proposed amendment of our subpoena rule (Rule 10(d))is unworkable, however, as allowing fourteen days to quash a subpoena could make a motion to quash moot. ARS 33-1377(B)&(C) require that a trial take place within six to eleven days after the complaint is filed, continuances included. Thus, under the Court's proposed amendment, even if a subpoena was issued and served on the date of filing the complaint, a timely motion to quash would not have to be ruled upon until after a trial had already occurred, making it meaningless. Our committee purposely omitted the fourteen day time frame from the Rules of Civil Procedure in order to require the courts to rule on motions to quash, and other pre-trial motions, prior to trial, as stated in our proposed Rule 9(a).